


i'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby

by gealbhan



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Dramedy, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Humor, Sibling Rivalry, Unreliable Narrator, does liquid's inferiority complex count as a character, lightly implied bb/kaz/ocelot and bb/eva
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22259719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: “How was school this week, boys?” asks John. “You had a biology test, right? How did that go, huh?”“David got an A+,” blurts Eli, tone accusing.Eva cocks an eyebrow at him. “And how did you do?”All eyes turn to Eli. “Can we talk about something else?” he asks, poking at his plate—he’d still been working on it, but all of a sudden, he’s not hungry anymore. “Like—I don’t know, Father, tell one of your old wrestling stories. From the heyday of Naked Snake or Big Boss or whatever other name you were using then. How many have you gone through again?”In which Liquid's nemesis is high school biology. And also his brother, who is suddenly very good at biology, whichmustmean he's up to something more than plain old studying.
Relationships: Liquid Snake & Solid Snake, Otacon/Solid Snake
Comments: 8
Kudos: 100





	i'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably the stupidest thing i have ever written but i truly couldn't resist Teen Snakes. please note that i have a mental block against using everyone's Real Person Names so writing a good portion of this was like pulling teeth. related, there's no concrete reason why snake is consistently "david" rather than "dave," david is just a better-sounding name imho. (i almost gave up trying to make "third" in russian sound like a real name, but ultimately i didn't want to change it back to "mantis," so oh well.)
> 
> title, naturally, from wheatus' "teenage dirtbag." enjoy!

According to the timer on his phone, Eli has been waiting in the parking lot for twenty-five minutes and fifteen seconds by the time his brother shows up. They didn’t have wrestling practice today, so there’s no excuse for his tardiness—nor does he offer one.

“Took you long enough,” snaps Eli as he flings open the unlocked door. He’s keyed up already, between his earlier grade and the fact that resident school geek Hal Emmerich had dared to wave as he got into his mom’s car a couple of minutes ago, so it’s not all David’s fault. Still, it’s the principle of the thing.

Their father should have picked them up today, but no one should ever be in a car with their father, who either drives like a grandfather on the brink of senility or a prison escapee with nothing left to live for, both extremes being excruciating. Besides, Eli is not wasting the sports car his mother bought for his and David’s last birthday. Not that he can drive it—fucking parallel parking kept him from his license twice and he hasn’t recovered his pride enough to retake the test a third time. So it looks marginally less cool with David behind the wheel.

But Eli still needs a ride home, so he hops into the passenger’s side and drops his bag between his feet. He slams the door shut and stews with irate energy, waiting for the right (read: most dramatic) time to speak. David drives in silence most of the time, not even offering a greeting besides a simple nod and a check that Eli has fastened his seatbelt before they pull out of the lot.

(“Nobody likes a narc, David,” says Eli even while he puts his seatbelt on.

“Nobody likes dying from flying through the windshield because they weren’t wearing a seatbelt, either,” responds David.)

Eli is restless as they set off. At the first red light they stop at, he takes the opportunity to ask, “Say, what did you get on the biology test we got back today? Dr. Clark’s a right hack who has it out for me in particular—” he grits his teeth as he reaches into his backpack for his graded test “—but how did you do?”

“The biology test, huh?” David thinks for a moment—their turn in the intersection won’t be for another, like, three lights, but his eyes are fixed on the road. “Oh, I think I actually got an A+ on that—ninety-eight percent or something like that. And the question I got wrong was about something Dr. Clark barely mentioned at the beginning of the semester—she said only one person got that right, remember?”

Eli does remember, but that is insignificant to him now. His hand finds the test just as David speaks, and Eli’s fist crumples it with a minute flex of his muscles. He would insist on proof, but then David would show it to him. David is many things, but a liar he is (mostly) not. “How the hell did you—?”

“I actually study,” says David, unblinking. “You should try it.”

“I have,” says Eli, which isn’t a lie insomuch as it is warping the truth. Technically speaking, he does try—but not for long. There are just so many other things he could be doing with his time, and what is hard work compared to innate talent, anyway? “Did you cheat off of someone, or something?”

David sighs. “No, Eli, I didn’t _cheat off of someone, or something_. I studied.” It’s much more annoying to hear the second time around, Eli finds. The light goes green. “Be quiet while I’m driving.”

Eli sinks down in his seat and spends the rest of the drive in furious silence.

*

This week, David and Eli are staying at their father’s, but their mother is still there for dinner. She and John had never been married, only “involved,” as she always puts it, and in Eli’s opinion, they’re maybe a little too close.

By the time they get home, Kazuhira—affectionately known as “Uncle Kaz” or “Master Miller” by the twins with nothing in between—is also there, though their other most frequent dinner guest—Adam, who put a firm moratorium on nicknames when the twins first learned to speak—is absent. That happens often. Eli is pretty sure he’s a member of the KGB. (“The KGB was dissolved and replaced with the Federal Security Service and Foreign Intelligence Service in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell,” David always says when Eli brings this up. The historical trivia does nothing to quell Eli’s suspicions.)

The upside to Kaz and Eva being there is that the twins don’t have to eat their father’s cooking. He tries, God bless him, but he is _not_ a chef. To be fair, Eli sets anything he puts in a microwave on fire and David’s tastes are almost the same as John’s, but Kaz’s curry is a considerable improvement from raw seafood.

Around this time of the evening, Eva has busted out the wine (for herself only), Kaz is feeding the dogs what’s left of his food despite John’s halfhearted protests that they shouldn’t be fed from the table, and David and Eli are waiting to be excused. Most nights here, they’re made to wash the dishes and then hang out in the living room or their bedrooms while the adults talk amongst themselves.

They’re not so lucky tonight. John, plate all but licked clean, turns on them. His expression is not that of their hardass wrestling instructor or well-intentioned but often distant father who doesn’t quite understand them—it’s worse. It belongs to the mixture of the two: The father interested in their lives whose genuine questions come across as interrogatory.

“How was school this week, boys?” An undeniable fact is that he is a terrifying person, and the eyepatch covering the eye he’d damaged in a wrestling match several decades ago only adds to the effect. However, he is much more intimidating in a gym or on a mat than he is in his home, where his collection of taxidermy insects and photographs of his sons in their childhood are on full display. “You had a biology test, right? How did that go, huh?”

He may not be _as_ intimidating here, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t intimidating at all. “David got an A+,” blurts Eli, tone accusing.

The table just about erupts with noise. Eva makes the appropriate amount of fawning sounds while raising her wine glass to toast with, it seems, the air. Kaz claps David on the shoulder hard enough that David winces. John gives the same stoic nod he always offers them when they win wrestling matches. David rubs the side of his neck, smiling a bit at the praise. Eli regrets everything.

Eva cocks an eyebrow at him. “And how did you do?”

All eyes turn to Eli. “Can we talk about something else?” he asks, poking at his plate—he’d still been working on it, but all of a sudden, he’s not hungry anymore. “Like—I don’t know, Father, tell one of your old wrestling stories. From the heyday of Naked Snake or Big Boss or whatever other name you were using then. How many have you gone through again?” John’s wrestling career had ended with his retirement several years back, but the legacy of his many, many aliases remains.

“Eli,” warns John, “answer your mother.”

“Fine! I got a D-, all right? Are you happy now?”

Saying it out loud makes him wince—he could read it in red, sure, but admitting it means it’s true. He’s met with silence. David raps his knuckles against Eli’s shoulder, a consoling mirror of Kaz’s shoulder pat, but Eli shakes off the pity with a venomous glare.

Kaz clears his throat. “That’s just fine, kid. You don’t need brains when you’ve got—” he flexes, which might not work out as well as planned because, while indeed one arm is composed of rippling muscles that Eli aspires to have someday, the other is a much narrower prosthetic “—good looks.”

“I do have brains,” says Eli, glaring harder, at the same time that John says, “Don’t tell them these things, Miller,” and Eva applauds.

“Okay, fine, school is important,” says Kaz, waving his hands. “Study hard, pass your classes, etcetera.”

“Listen to Master Miller,” says David, calm as ever. God, does Eli want to throttle him.

“Technically, only an F is a failing grade, so you should still pass,” adds Eva. “Also, if you cheat, don’t be obvious about it. Teachers love to brag about how they’ll know if you cheat, but they’ll only really know if you cheat _badly_.”

John pinches the bridge of his nose. “Eva—”

“What? I’m just handing out useful life advice!” she says, raising two well-manicured hands in defense. “School won’t teach you everything you need to survive in the world, you know—you’ve got to have book smarts _and_ street smarts. If Adam were here, he’d give you a speech about always landing on your feet, goddamn ocelot that he is.” She rolls her eyes and takes a sip of wine.

She is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the coolest person at this table. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mother,” says Eli, though his hackles are still raised. The pitfalls of being established from birth as the antagonistic twin.

“You should,” she says with a bright smile. “Kaz has the highest education here, so go to him when you want to know about science—” Kaz waves both his prosthetic and flesh hands “—your father can teach you about how to beat people up—” John only blinks “—but I know everything about everything and—more importantly—every _one_ , so come to me when you want to know anything else.”

“You’re very smart, Mama,” David tells her.

Eva reaches over to squeeze his cheek. “I know,” she says before ushering him and Eli off. “Now leave the grown-ups to their conversation, darlings. And since I probably won’t see you until next week—business to do, you know how it is—”

Eli has never been sure what his mother does, to be honest. One time David had said, “Now _Mama_ I could see working for the KGB,” and Eli had laughed at the time, but now he thinks about it every day. It’s never seemed like the right opportunity to ask, though, and who knows if she (or John, if he even knows) would even answer in earnest.

“—I’ll tell you now to be good for your father, okay?”

“All right,” says David.

“Okay,” says Eli, already planning to disregard this.

John glances at him as though he can read his intentions in his eyes. Eli resists the urge to stick his tongue out as he scoots his chair back, waiting for David to clear the dishes so he can wash them.

*

If the strange case of the A+ had been a one-off occurrence, it might have been irritating but nothing more—but, as it turns out, it isn’t. To Eli’s bewilderment, David continues getting high grades on their biology assessments for weeks.

Neither of them is _stupid_ , and earning good grades is a requirement to stay on the school wrestling team, but prior to this, both of them (more so Eli; he speaks seven languages, most learned in his spare time and taught to him by his parents, Uncle Kaz, and Adam, but fuck if he’s going to show it) have gotten solidly average marks, intelligence weighed out by lack of effort. David’s sudden improvement doesn’t appear to be in any other classes except pre-calculus, which Eli isn’t taking and therefore isn’t concerned with. It’s odd, is all, and Eli is going to investigate it by whatever means necessary.

Like bursting into his brother’s room at their mother’s house at half-past ten, saying, “Okay, I give. What’s up with you?”

“Don’t you knock?” responds David, flinging a book onto the floor. Eli expects it to be a porn mag or something, but with a glance (blackmail opportunities never sleep), he can see that it’s… an issue of _No.6_. Huh. Eli’s never known his brother to be a big manga reader.

He brushes off his confusion by rolling his eyes and flicking his hair back. “Why would I need to? It isn’t like you’re up to anything strange, is it?”

“I could have been studying.”

“Oh, yes, ‘studying.’” Eli makes sure to lay on the finger quotes as thick as possible. “I’m onto your little game, _brother_. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m going to find out.”

On the surface, David appears genuinely unsure what Eli is talking about, but Eli doesn’t buy it. David had inherited their father’s perfect mask of a blank poker face; Eli, on the other hand, had gotten the recessive gene for resting bitch face. They stare at each other for a long moment before Eli gives up. Pride aside, he’s not going to get anything out of David like this.

“Just watch your back.” Eli makes to turn, then stops and looks back over his shoulder. “By the way, have you seen my hair dye recently?”

“Your hair dye?”

Glancing either way as though someone is going to overhear him, Eli hisses, “Yes, my hair dye. You know I’m not naturally this blonde.” He raises his voice again. “Anyway, it seems to have gone missing from the bathroom at Father’s, and I was wondering if you had seen it.”

“I haven’t,” says David, sliding to sit up. “Ask Mama. Maybe she’s planning to touch up her grays or something—she was complaining about it at dinner the other night.”

David stands, then, presumably to close the door in Eli’s face should Eli not shut it himself, and Eli leaves for real this time. As he does, he can hear David crouching to pick up the manga issue he’d tossed away.

Muttering under his breath all the way, Eli trudges downstairs to wait for Eva to return from her nightly bike ride.

*

Most people sit on the steps outside during lunch to smoke—a blatant act of rebellion, given the prominent _No Smoking On School Property_ sign stuck to the side of the wall, but it’s out of sight of all of the security cameras. Eli, despite his reputation, does not smoke. He’s only here to vent while his friend plays with a lighter.

“It’s just weird.”

“Mm.”

“Like, there’s no way he’s this good all of a sudden, right? Enough so to handily trounce me? Something must be up.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I just can’t figure out what it could be. He always—well, usually—tells Mother and Father and Master Miller the truth. Not always Adam, but Adam is an asshole. Maybe it’s something illegal.”

“Oh?”

“Like, I don’t know, maybe he’s interfering with the test somehow. Or he’s stealing answer keys and writing the answers on his hands and checking during the test—Dr. Clark doesn’t know how to make tests that aren’t basically all multiple choice, anyway. One time she gave us a pop quiz where all of the answers were C.”

“Hm.”

“Maybe they’re working together to piss me off, even. If so, it’s working. Dammit! I played right into their hands. I hope it’s not that. Dr. Clark could find a better minion than David.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Or maybe David is taking some sort of weird brain solution that makes him smarter. Between you and me, he’s always been the dumber of us. Everyone says we should have the same IQ, but I certainly don’t think so.”

“Yeah.”

“And—hey, are you even listening to me?”

 _Click_ goes the lighter in Tretij’s hand, which he’s been flicking open and shut all throughout Eli’s rambling. “Yes.”

Eli narrows his eyes. “What was I talking about?”

“How you’re inferior to your brother because he got a good grade in biology and you flunked, so you’re trying to figure out why.” Not inaccurate, Eli supposes, though his phrasing would be quite different. “It’s because you skipped class a bunch and didn’t study.”

“You convinced me to skip!”

“And if you had gone, you would have learned about the dangers of peer pressure.” Tretij adjusts his mask. “I don’t think your plan to expose your brother as a lying cheat is going anywhere because he isn’t one.”

“Isn’t he, though?”

“The only thing I know about him that you haven’t told me is that he likes _Castlevania_. I can’t make a moral judgment off of that.”

Eli folds his arms. “Some friend you are,” he mutters under his breath. “Maybe _you’re_ the one providing David with all of the answers to our tests. Through, I don’t know, telepathy or some shit like that.”

“Could be.” Eli glares, but Tretij’s hidden face offers no elaboration. “Want another stick and poke? I’ve got some new needles, and Wolf wanted one.”

Turning morosely to his lunch, half-eaten because he’d lost his appetite mid-rant, Eli’s only answer is a shake of the head. It’s for the better—the design of a snake and sword on his arm is still healing, and he’s had to stop wearing tank tops at home so his parents won’t find out (though he thinks his mom, at least, would like it), which is a _major_ cramp on his style. They make up ninety-percent of his wardrobe, for fuck’s sake. He’s had to start wearing David’s clothes. The whole situation disgusts him; at least the tattoo looks cool, so it’s worth it in the end. Probably.

Tretij goes back to screwing with his lighter while Eli brings himself to eat as much as he can before the bell rings, the constant _click_ s his bittersweet symphony.

*

From then on, things spiral. Eli recovers his hair dye (his mother had taken it to cover her gray hairs, as David had guessed, though she gives it back and says she’s thinking about shaving her head so it can all go silver). David continues getting higher and higher grades in biology, even taking up extra credit.

This is the straw that breaks Eli’s patience. He watches David like a hawk over the next couple of weeks, but there’s not much he can do without tailing him. After dinner one night, Eli asks Adam for advice on discreetly following someone and gets stared at like he’s a lunatic. To be fair, this has been Adam’s default reaction to him ever since that time Eli pulled a knife on him at age thirteen.

“Why do you want to know?” asks Adam, squinting. “Seriously, do I need to report you to some kind of authority figure?”

Given Adam is as _stick it to the man_ as Eli is—or at least had been at one point, according to Eva’s stories—Eli is pretty sure the only authority figure he means is John, but that’s the worst one. “No, I was just curious.”

Adam nods, slow, holding his gaze. “Well, I’m a closed book,” he says after a long moment, a smarmy smile crossing his face as he lazily pets one of the dogs. (Their process is simple: They beg for scraps from Kaz, who gives them to them, and then Adam, who doesn’t unless they do tricks, and lastly John, who refuses unless he’s away from the dinner table. They never beg Eva for food, but they do clamber all over her until she pets each one. David sneaks them treats when they’ve been good, and they avoid Eli like the plague. Recognizing his status as the alpha, he always says.) “You’re not going to get any secrets out of me.”

“Okay,” decides Eli, “you’re definitely in the KGB.”

“The KGB doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Sounds like something a KGB agent would say,” says Eli before darting off to his room to do some Internet digging.

After wrestling practice next week, David says he has something to go do and heads off. Eli seizes his opportunity to trail after him, hanging a few minutes back and taking a different route where he can still see David from a distance. David doesn’t turn into any seedy alleyways or anything—he stays downtown and walks into… a library. As a rule, Eli doesn’t go into libraries, but he makes an exception.

He follows at a respectable distance and flips his sunglasses—stolen from Uncle Kaz—back to his forehead as he steps in. The receptionist gives him a strange look, probably because he looks like a teenage delinquent who wouldn’t step foot in a library if his life depended on it, but they don’t make a big fuss about it.

Eli scans his surroundings for his brother. At this time—on the verge of sunset on a weekday—there aren’t many people inside aside from some college students clustered in dark corners with cups of coffee walling them in, so it doesn’t take long to spot him.

David is going to a table. Okay, normal enough for “studying,” but what catches Eli’s attention is that there’s already someone else sitting there. And it’s not just an instance of two people sitting at the same table because one already happens to be there and the other person doesn’t want to move and so they just sit in silence at opposite ends until the bell rings—David has moved toward this table with purpose, intent, and he’s striking up a conversation with his—friend? Classmate? No, neither of those carries the right connotation. David had gone into a metaphorical alleyway after all, it seems, to carry out this backroom deal.

Eli ducks behind the nearest shelf and creeps closer. When he gets close enough to recognize that hair (that _hair_. Eli has pictures of his father with a mullet, and he has never seen a more horrendous style in his life) and those glasses, his heart almost stops.

David’s—study buddy, Eli decides to be the right term, is none other than _Hal Emmerich_. A hero among geeks and a loser among normal people. He doesn’t share biology with them, given all of his classes are advanced placement, nor has Eli ever had an actual conversation with him. He’d intended on never doing so until graduation and then tracking him down years later once he became a billionaire for some award-winning invention to evoke some high school nostalgia and get himself in with the big boys. Or be hung up on. That had seemed like the safest course of action, socially speaking.

And yet here David is, settling down across the table like it’s part of some everyday routine, spreading out his course materials, and even smiling as he leans across the table to listen to Hal talk.

“Oh, that snake,” snarls Eli.

He can’t believe David somehow ended up studying with Hal Emmerich. Stupid nerd. Is that an oxymoron? Who cares—Eli may be passing English, but that doesn’t mean he thinks about it when he isn’t legally required to. _David_ , he decides, is an oxy _moron_.

As he fumes, Eli watches the conversation progress through the gaps in the shelf—because they’re not just studying at the same table, they have to talk too. David says something; Hal answers while fixing his glasses or tucking his hair behind an ear. Hal leans over to point out something in the textbook; David leans forward to hear him better; they both look up and then jump back with nervous laughter at how close they’ve gotten.

It’s all very suspicious. Eli crosses his arms and drums his fingers across his sleeves. It’s almost like—

Eli pauses. No. His brother is already committing the act of social suicide by hanging out with someone like Hal—there is no way he would proceed to something as stupid as having a crush on him, right? David is a dumbass, but he’s not that much of a dumbass, right? Right?!

Maybe this is a social experiment, Eli muses. The popular kid cozying up to the weird nerd to lower their defenses, and then socially ruining them for all of eternity to further their own status. Or maybe that only happens in movies. If that is the case, Eli commends his brother—but the alternative is horrifying.

Someone passes by, and Eli busies himself by grabbing a book off the shelf and flipping to a random page. It occurs to him that he may be the dumbass in this scenario. Then he glances behind him to find Hal reaching over to doodle a diagram in David’s notebook and David staring back with an obnoxious slack-jawed expression and decides, no, his brother wins that title.

Eli scoffs and turns back to the book he’s pretending to read—it’s about genetics or something, but Eli understands none of it. Okay, maybe everyone has a point about attending class more. Eli will in no way change his behavior in this regard.

He turns the page often enough to make it seem like he’s reading to any more passersby (there are none), but he keeps checking over his shoulder for status updates. No chance of sneaking out now. All right, he could, since David is so absorbed in his _studying_ , but he won’t without gathering some blackmail material first. Too bad he hadn’t brought one of his father’s cameras.

After some time, Hal gets up—to use the bathroom or text his mom or something, fuck if Eli knows—and Eli takes his chance. He slips out from behind the shelf and, as David turns back to look at the textbook with a dopey look on his face, drops into the seat Hal had vacated.

“So. _Brother_.”

David grunts, not even looking up. How annoying—Eli had figured expecting him to fall out of his chair was a no-go, but he’d at least wanted him to be a little shocked by his twin materializing out of thin air. “Don’t call me that. It makes you sound like an anime character.”

“Since when do you watch anime?”

David gives him a capital-L Look, one lifted from their father. It falls flat with both eyes. “Why are you even here? I thought you thought you were too cool for libraries.”

“I am! You’ve forced my hand.” Eli rests his crossed arms on the table. “But now I know your secret. All that talk about studying—ha. I’m laughing because it’s such a joke, David.”

“I am studying, though,” says David, gesturing to his textbook and notebook.

“Yes, fine. But why is it with Hal goddamn Emmerich?”

“I didn’t know his middle name was ‘goddamn,’” says David, blinking. His stare is as calm and collected as ever, but something has to be cracking beneath the surface, Eli is certain.

Under the table, Eli kicks him in the knee. “Wiseass.”

“He’s tutoring me in biology and pre-calculus,” answers David with a grimace. “How is this any different from you hanging out with that weird goth arsonist who’s always wearing a mask?”

“He’s not weird,” snaps Eli. “Or an arsonist.”

“Yet,” says David under his breath.

Eli ignores him. “And—and he’s irrelevant to this, anyway! It’s different. He’s not my tutor, he’s my friend.” Only real friend, some might say, but to that Eli would say _fuck you_ because it’s less pathetic than saying his mother is also his friend. “It’s not like you’re friends with Emmerich.” As soon as he says it, he sees the minute shift in David’s posture. “Oh my God.”

“Eli—”

Eli slams his hands on the table. “Did you actually somehow become friends with _Hal Emmerich_? How the fuck—”

“Not so loud. We’re in a library.”

“Oh, so that’s what you take offense to?” Eli spreads his arms in frustration. “Not the fact that you’re spending all of your free time with a nerd with the social status of an ant who looks like he hasn’t washed his hair in a month and buys all of his clothes from the graphic tees section at Hot Topic?”

“The jacket and boots you’re wearing right now are both from Hot Topic.”

“Besides the point!” Earning glares from neighboring tables, Eli glares right back but lowers his voice as best he can. “What do you even see in someone like that, anyway?”

For a beat, he doesn’t think David is going to answer—which would be fine; Eli doesn’t actually need to know—but then he looks down. “What I see in him, huh? I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess he’s smart. He talks a lot about computers and engineering and hacking and anime and stuff like that. Most of it goes over my head, but it sounds smart enough.” David is smiling a little now, and Eli only holds off on making a snide remark along the lines of _wow, and here I thought you got straight A’s_ because he’s still going. “Selfless and nice, too—he’s the one who offered to tutor me. He said he’d always kind of wanted to talk to me, but I seemed too cool—which is weird because, uh, I wouldn’t call him _cool_ , but he’s definitely interesting. So—I don’t know how, actually, but we are friends.”

That was… more in-depth than Eli expected. And the most he’s heard David say in a long time. “You’re not going to pull a _Carrie_ on him?” he asks, disappointed.

“No pig blood will be involved. I like him,” says David, still smiling, which, duh—Eli is pretty sure even an idiot orbiting in space would be able to see that. “We have a handshake.”

“A handshake,” says Eli numbly. “Do I even know you?”

David shrugs, looking disgustingly pleased with himself. Eli wants to lunge across the table, a viper headed for the throat, and hit him over the head with that biology textbook—he’s sure it would make for a great sound effect. But they _are_ in a library. He forces himself to show some restraint.

Eli—and by extension, David—are saved from any further wrath by Hal’s reappearance, footsteps pausing once he notices Eli’s presence. Eli turns back to raise an eyebrow, and Hal plasters on a nervous grin.

“Oh! Uh, hi—Eli, right? Dave’s brother?”

“Right,” says Eli, leaning back in his seat but stopping short of tipping it back on its legs like he does in English sometimes to piss Naomi Hunter off. Across the table, David is making surreptitious slit-throat gestures. “I was just here to drop something off for my dear little brother and then be on my way.”

“We’re twins,” says David.

“Sure.” Eli gestures between their respective heights, even though his is only added to by his hair and Kaz’s sunglasses. Hal is still giving him that smile somewhere between _polite_ and _about to have a panic attack_. Eli could draw this out, really make him sweat to make up for his brother’s niceties, but, well, he’s bored and hungry and somewhat worn out from the revelations. “Nice meeting you, Hal.”

“You too,” says Hal faintly.

Eli gets to his feet and dusts himself off. “I’ll see you at home by dinner, then, David.”

“Yeah, yeah,” mumbles David before pausing and lifting his head. “Actually, tell Mama I won’t be home for dinner—I won’t be late, though.”

“Sorry?” asks Eli, stopping in his tracks.

“Oh, my mother invited him over for dinner,” says Hal. When Eli glances at him, he makes to backtrack: “Uh, if that’s a problem with your mom at all, though, I’m sure—”

“No, no, it’s just fine.” Eli shoots David a look that he’s sure he’ll sense even if he seems to be very interested in his textbook all of a sudden. “Mother will be delighted he’s making friends.” That’s true, probably. Eva is far too invested in her sons’ social lives, and it can’t even be dismissed as vicarious given how much cooler her life has been than theirs are.

“I have friends,” says David, affronted.

“Sure,” says Eli again. He steps aside for Hal to regain his seat. “I’ll see you later tonight, then. Goodbye.”

David nods, looking relieved, like this somehow absolves him of everything Eli has had to bear witness to. Eli scoffs under his breath and gives both him and Hal the sharpest glare he can muster before sauntering away.

*

Late that night, after dinner (which David is indeed absent from, much to Eva’s joy), Eli is sitting on the roof and staring up at the stars. He had been texting Tretij, but he’s pretty sure at this point he’s gone to bed or is ignoring Eli, which, rude. The chill in the air has grown stronger as the night has progressed, carrying the distinct edge of winter, but Eli’s letterman jacket is draped around his shoulders, providing all the warmth he needs. His hands tap against his knees as he gazes upward.

He’s never taken astronomy or anything to that effect, but Eli likes the sky—and being up high. It feels safe here in a way it probably shouldn’t, given the relative amount of potential danger he’s in, but he’s always felt best on an adrenaline high, blood in his mouth and aching pain in his limbs.

Eva understands, so long as he sits where she can see him from a window and keeps his phone on him. John’s house doesn’t have an accessible roof, so the closest Eli can get to the sky there is the back porch, standing a respectable distance from his father while he smokes. _Don’t start smoking,_ John tells him firmly every time this happens. _You’ll end up like me._

Eli doesn’t think that would be the worst thing to be—his father is a right asshole sometimes, and Eli hates him most of the time, but admittedly he’s pretty cool too—but he doesn’t smoke. Golden child David, on the other hand—

The roof creaks as another weight drops down beside Eli. _Think of the devil_.

“How was your dinner?” asks Eli, lip curling, in place of a real greeting.

“It was fine,” says David, who, despite Eli’s sharp look, is still wearing that idiotic smile he’d had on earlier. “Hal’s mother isn’t, uh, the best cook, but—”

“She isn’t Father?”

David nods with a grimace. “She and her partner were nice, too,” he adds. “Intimidating, especially her partner, but I’m used to that. They seemed happy that Hal had made a friend besides his younger sister. She’s in middle school and is just as smart as he is, if not more so.”

Eli doesn’t need to know this much, but he figures that if David doesn’t tell her (which he undoubtedly will), he can pass it on to their mother. “Well, _our_ mom nearly suffocated when I told her where you were—she was so shocked she choked on her food,” he says, dry. “While you were schmoozing with your new best friend’s parents, I was preparing to perform the Heimlich maneuver on ours. I don’t even know the Heimlich. Our mother almost choked to death tonight, David. I hope you’re happy with yourself.”

“Should have taken health back in ninth grade,” mutters David. “Then you’d know the Heimlich.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Eli, staying seated because he’s a thrill-seeker but doesn’t actually want to fall off the roof, kicks David in the shin and elbows him in the ribs. His antics are countered by David’s own arm, spurring a brief scuffle. With David half-distracted and Eli running off of pure sibling-generated rage, Eli emerges victorious. “Woo!” he cheers, delighted by the echo. “Alpha twin!”

“Rematch tomorrow during wrestling practice,” insists David, raising his fist. “It’ll be fairer with an audience, anyway.”

Eli laughs. “That eager to lose again, are we? And in front of respectable peers to boot! You’re on, of course.” He knocks his fist against David’s.

A pause ensues, in which something that isn’t quite guilt seeps in. Eli has never apologized to his brother in his life and is not about to start now. Plus, he was right to be suspicious, so there. Instead, he says, “You know, if he breaks your heart, I’ll kick his ass. It wouldn’t even be that hard—I could squeeze it in as a warm-up before wrestling practice. I bet he weighs ninety pounds soaking wet.”

David doesn’t justify that with more than a sigh.

“Also,” adds Eli, edging closer, because this is what’s really important, “if you get a higher grade than me on one more test, I’ll kick _your_ ass.”

“I’ll see if he’ll tutor you, too.”

“That’s not—I don’t need help from any weird mouth-breathing nerds,” says Eli hotly, but he shrinks under David’s glare. “Ugh, fine, I’ll play nice with your dorky boyfriend.”

“He’s not my—shut up, Eli.” The tips of David’s ears are red.

“Uh-huh. I would say ‘good luck with that,’ but we both know I wouldn’t mean it. Terrible luck, in fact.”

A gust of wind blows through, the sky growing a shade darker alongside the sharp chill. Their mother will call them inside before long if neither pushes the other off first—at this time of the evening, with Eli’s bones still stirring for a real fight, all bets are off. But for now, Eli takes the moment of peace to lift his gaze skyward once more.

“Gemini sure is bright tonight, huh?”

**Author's Note:**

> shortly after this, snake follows up on his promise to ask otacon to tutor liquid and the later conversation goes something like this:  
> otacon: tell me One Thing you already know about biology.  
> liquid: uh... recessive genes are bad, dominant genes are good. also only asymmetrical creatures make it through survival of the fittest  
> otacon, after a solid minute of silence, turning to snake: yeah there's nothing i can do about this
> 
> anyway, thanks for reading! if you have time to spare, comments & kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/withlittlequill) | [tumblr](http://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com)


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